Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
