Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
