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The social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their garments.

Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.

Background of Controversy and Policy

The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.