Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
