Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
