Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
