Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
