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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.

Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.

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

Background of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.