Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
