Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting 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 prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.