Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases 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 sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
