Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
