Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
