Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate 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 "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
