Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
