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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.

Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

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

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.