Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
