Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
