Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
