Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
