Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term 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 a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
