Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
