Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
Eva de Vries is a passionate book lover and local writer from Eindhoven.
