Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
