Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
