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The online network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.

Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.

Company Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".

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

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.

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

XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".

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

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.