Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
