Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
