Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
