Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
