Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
