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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their clothing.

Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

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

It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.