Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
