Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
