Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
