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The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.