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Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The system has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of public figures.

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

XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

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