Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
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 image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
