Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms 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 technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
