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Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their garments.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

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 at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

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

It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.