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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.

Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

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

It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

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

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.