Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
