Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
