Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
