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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.

Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.

It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

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

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.