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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.

Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.