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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.

Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.

It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a graphic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.