Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
