Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.