Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
