Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
