Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
