Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
