Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
