Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
