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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.

Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

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

"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.