Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
