Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from 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 supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
