Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
