Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
