Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
