Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
