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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.

Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.

It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.