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The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.

Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".

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

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

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

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

It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.