Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
