Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
