Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
