Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
