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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.

Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

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

It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.