Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
