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Elon Musk's online network X has caused major outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

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

It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

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

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.