Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
