Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
