Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
