Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
