Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
