Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
