Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
