Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
