Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
