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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and footage 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.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.