Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
