Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
