Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
