Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
