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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.

Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

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

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

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