Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
