Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
