Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
