Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
