Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
