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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.

Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.

It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.

"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.