Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
