Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
