Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
