Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"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."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
