Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
