Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
