Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
