Elon Musk's online network X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
