Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
