🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their garments.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.