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The online network X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".

"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".

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

It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.