Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.