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The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.

Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities

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

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context 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 Rules

The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".

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

It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.