Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
