Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag 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 alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
