Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
