Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
