Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
