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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.

It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of public figures.

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

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.