Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
