Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial 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."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
