Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
