Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
