Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into 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 post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
