Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," 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 against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
