Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
