Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
