Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
