Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional 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 Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
