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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.

Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".

"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.

It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.