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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.