Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
