Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.