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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.