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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their garments.

Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.

It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.