Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
