Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
