Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
