Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
