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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.

Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy 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 Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

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

It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.