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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.

Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.

It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".

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 services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.