Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
