Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
