Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
