Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
