Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
