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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".

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

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.