Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
