Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop 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 regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, 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 paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
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 artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
