Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
