Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
