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Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.

Several instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.

History of Criticism and Policy

The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.