Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
