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Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.

Several examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.