Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
