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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their clothing.

Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

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

It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The system has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, 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 distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.