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The social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.

Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.

It is often used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Policy

The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.