Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
