Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
