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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.

Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.

It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.