Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
