Elon Musk's online network X has caused major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
