Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
