Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
