Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
