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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.

Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.

It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.