Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
