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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.

Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

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

A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

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

It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.