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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.

It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.

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

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

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.