Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
