Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
