Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
