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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.

Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.

"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.