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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.

Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.