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The online network X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.

Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.