Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding 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 post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
