Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
