Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
