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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.

Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.