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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.

Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.

"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".

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

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.