Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
