Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
