Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
