Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
