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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.

Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

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

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

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

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.