Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
