Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
