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Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.

Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

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

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.