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The social media platform X has caused major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.

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

Background of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.