Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing 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 terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
