Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
