Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
