Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
