Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
