Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
