Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
