Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
