Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
