Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" 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 artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
