🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.

Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.