Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence 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 a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
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 photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
