Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
