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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.

Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.

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

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.