Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
