Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
