Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
