Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
