Elon Musk's online network X has caused major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
