Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
