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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, 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 tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

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

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.