Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
