Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
