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

Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.