Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
