Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.