Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
