Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
