Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
