Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
