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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.

Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.