Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
