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Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.

Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.

It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.