Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing 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 terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
