Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
