Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
