Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases 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 sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
