Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
