Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
