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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.

It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.