Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy 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."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
