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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.

Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

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

It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.