Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
