Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
