Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
