Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
