Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
