Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
