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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their clothing.

Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing 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 chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The system has been condemned for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.