Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
