Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
