Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
