Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
