Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
