Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
