Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
