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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.

Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.