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The social media network X has sparked major backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.

It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.