Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
