Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
