Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
