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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.

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

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity 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 months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.