Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm 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 answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
