Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.