Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
