Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
