Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
