Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
