Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired 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 services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
