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Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their garments.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".

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

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.

It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.