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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.

Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.