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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.

Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

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 government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.

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

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

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.