Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material 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 not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
