Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
