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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.

Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.

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

Background of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.