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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their attire.

Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

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

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

Background of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.