Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
