Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
