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The online platform X has provoked significant outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.

Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Legal Position

XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.

It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.