Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
