Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform 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 regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
