Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
