Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
