Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create 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 mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
