Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
