Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
