Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
