Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
