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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.

Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

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

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.