Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
