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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

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

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.