Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
