Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
