Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
