🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.

Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.