Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
