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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.

Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

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

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

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

It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.