Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
