Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
