Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
