Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
