Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
