Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
