Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
