Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
