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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.

Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.

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

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.