Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
