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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.

Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.

"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.