Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform 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 action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
