Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
