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Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.

Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.