Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
