Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
