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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.

Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.