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

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

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.