Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
