Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
