Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
