Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
