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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.