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Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.

Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.

It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.