Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
