Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
