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Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.

Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence 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 tweet.

It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.