Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
