Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
