Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
