Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
