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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.

Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".

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

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

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

It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.