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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.

Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.