Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
