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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their clothing.

Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.

It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

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

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.