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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.

It is often used to give reactions or further 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 Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.