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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.

Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.