Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images 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 risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
