Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
