Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
