Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
