Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
