Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
