Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
