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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.

Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.