Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
