Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
