Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
