Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
