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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.

Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.

It is often used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.

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

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.