Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
