Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
