Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
