Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
