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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.

Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.

"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.