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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.

Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

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

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

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

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.