Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
