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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.

Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

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

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.