Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
