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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their garments.

Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.