Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
