Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
