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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

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

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

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

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".

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

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.