Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
