Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
