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Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

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

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".

"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.

It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.

"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.