Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
