Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
