Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
