Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
