Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
