Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
