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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a graphic fashion".

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

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.