Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
