Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
