Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
