Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
