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The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.

Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.

It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.