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The social media platform X has caused major anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.

Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

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