Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
