Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
