Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
