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Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.

Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

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

It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.

History of Criticism and Policy

The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.