Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
