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Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.

Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

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

It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.