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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.

Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.

It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"X has been allowing 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 acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.