Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
