Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
