Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
