Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
