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The online platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.

Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Legal Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

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

It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Controversy and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.

"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.