Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.