Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
