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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.

Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.

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

XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.