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The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".

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

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.

It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.