Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
