Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
