Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
