Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
