Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
