Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material 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 witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
