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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.

Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to 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 tweet.

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

History of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.