Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
