Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.