Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
