Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
