Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
