Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
