Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," 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 illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
