Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
