Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
