🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.

It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

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