Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
