Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
