Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
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 outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
