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Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.

Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

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