Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
