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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.

Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.

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

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.