Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
