Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
