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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.

Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

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

It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.