🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their attire.

Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.

It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The system has been criticised for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.