Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
