Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage 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 a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
