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Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.

Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.

It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.