🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.

Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.

It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.