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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.

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

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

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.