Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
