Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
