Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
