Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
