Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
