Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
