Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
