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The online platform X has provoked major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.

Company Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.