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Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.

Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

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

It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

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

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.