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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.

Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.

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

XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.