Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
