Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
