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Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.

Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.