Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution 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 prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
