Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
