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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.

Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.