Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated 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 unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
