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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their garments.

Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.

It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.