Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
