Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
