Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
