Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
