Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
