Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
