Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
