Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
