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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.

Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

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

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.