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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.

Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.