Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
