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An online trend involving asking Grok, the Elon Musk-owned chatbot, to undress photographs of women and girls and show them wearing bikinis has rightly sparked outrage in the UK and internationally. Earlier this week Liz Kendall, the science and technology secretary, described the proliferation of the digitally altered pictures, some of which are overtly sexualised or violent, as “unacceptable in decent society”. What happens next will depend on whether she and her colleagues are prepared to follow through on such remarks. The government’s generally enthusiastic approach to AI, and the growing role they see for it in public services, do not inspire confidence in their ability to confront such threats.
In addition to the deluge of bikini images, the Internet Watch Foundation, a charity, has evidence that Grok Imagine (an AI tool that generates images and videos from prompts) has been used to create illegal child sexual abuse images. Yet while X says that it removes such material, there is no sign of safeguards being tightened in response to bikini images that are cruel and violating even where they do not break the law.
The inadequacy of this response is unsurprising, given Mr Musk’s track record and that of his industry. But it is still disturbing. Earlier this week xAI, the company that owns both X (formerly Twitter) and Grok, announced that it has raised $20bn in its latest funding round. On Wednesday Mr Musk posted on X that “Grok is on the side of the angels”.
In the UK, attention is now focused on the media regulator, Ofcom, which is assessing the need for an investigation. If it wants to retain public confidence, Ofcom needs to inject more urgency into its approach, and explain the steps it is taking. The UK’s online safety law treats service disruption as a last resort, meaning officials have to follow a process before they can do anything as drastic as block a particular site.
The danger is that such steps can be dragged out by platforms that do not want to comply. A worrying example are the fines imposed on pornography websites that have failed to meet age verification standards – and which have so far not been paid. What is Ofcom going to do in response?
More regulation will be needed as technology develops, disrupting long-established behaviours and norms. The public, as well as law and technology experts, needs to grapple with the question of how far individual rights over our own faces and bodies should extend. In Denmark, there are plans to give people copyright over their own likeness, so that manipulating photographs of real people without consent would become illegal – even when the images are not intimate or sexualised.
But a government that takes the safety and wellbeing of women and children seriously cannot wait for such debates to play out, and must respond quickly to events such as those of the past week. Gaps in the law relating to chatbots need to be filled now, not in an AI bill that could take years. The police and crime bill could be amended to achieve this. Prof Clare McGlynn’s proposal for a broader-brush approach to sexual offences – in place of the current pattern of separate initiatives to tackle each emerging threat – should also be looked at. Ministers as well as regulators need to show that users, not platforms, are their priority. Rules governing the online world must be democratically agreed and enforced – and not ignored by big tech.
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