Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
