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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.

Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.