Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
