Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
