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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.

Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

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

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

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

It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.