Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
