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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.

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

History of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.