Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
