Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
