Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
