Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
