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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.

Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" 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 images.

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

It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.