Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
