Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
