Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
