Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
