Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
