Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
