Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
