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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.

Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.

It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.