Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
