Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
