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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.

Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted 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 "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

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

It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.