Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
