Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
