Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
