Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
