Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm 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 features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
