Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute 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 required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
