Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
