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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

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

"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

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

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.