Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to 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 frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
