Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
