Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
