Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
