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Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.

Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.

It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.