Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
