Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
