Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
