Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
