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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.

Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

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