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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their clothing.

Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

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

It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.