Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
