Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
