Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
