Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
