Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
