Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
