Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.