Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
