Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
