Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
