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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.

Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

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

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.

It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.