Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
