Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
