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Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.

Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a graphic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.