Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
