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Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.

Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.

It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.