Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
