Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
