Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"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."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
