Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
