Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
