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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.

Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.