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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.

Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.