Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
