Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
