Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
