Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
