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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.

Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.

It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.