Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
