Elon Musk's online network X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
