Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
