Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
