Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
