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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.

Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.