Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.